Jump high, jump low, the Government and Opposition will have to return to Parliament. Irresponsible utterances by those only interested that come 21st March the government is deemed “illegal” will prove to be immaterial, because our lawmakers, who are paid by the citizens, will have to return to the National Assembly and do what they must. They have no choice, jump high, jump low.

Even when nations are at war their leaders talk, because resolution comes from sitting at the table, hammering out differences, and proceeding to make agreements to be honoured thereafter. Somehow our politicians think that this natural course of events will elude them or they will not have to so subject themselves.

Guyana is not at war with herself, and her leaders must do much better to ensure the business of this nation is being conducted in a manner consistent with the office and responsibility they hold. Continue reading →

President Donald Trump is slated to meet with the leaders of several Caribbean countries later this week at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the White House announced.

Trump will gather with the leaders of the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Saint Lucia on Friday March 22, 2019 to reaffirm the White House’s “strong friendship with and commitment to these countries, and signal the importance of the Caribbean to the hemisphere,” the White House said in a statement. Continue reading →

Once the decision was made to ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane last week, somehow it made sense. Until then, mysteriously, we were somehow still awaiting more information as country after country suspended their use. Indeed, the United States was the last to declare emergency grounding.

Did our FAA have some special knowledge here that other international agencies do not? Or was this lack of action the result of protectionist action for American business or political power? Was it the FAA or the president who delayed? And how, after all, is this looking out for the best safety interests of Americans? Continue reading →

On Friday, an Australian white supremacist committed a monstrous act of violence against Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. The attack, which he live streamed, was steeped in the kind of global iconography and discourse that characterizes modern white supremacy.

The assailant played a song about convicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadžić as he approached the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, and his weapons bore further testament to the global resonances of contemporary white supremacy: One rifle apparently eulogized a Swedish girl who was murdered by an Uzbek immigrant in Stockholm, while another celebrated a Frankish nobleman who fought Muslim armies in Western France over a millennium ago. His manifesto cited U.S. white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof as inspiration, and featured a diagram promoted by U.S. white supremacist David Duke on its cover.

In F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, one of the pastimes of the indulgent rich was prolonged conversation on “The Best of Everything and Anything.” Of course this was possible because in the thirties there was no television – the nemesis of banter and conversation between family and friends.

In subsequent years, the Best of Everything was extended by newspapers and magazines to annual polls on Jazz, restaurants, the worst dressed, the rich and famous, MVPs and today’s popular Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.

In recording my Nostalgias I have always cherished the idea of sharing my best – titillating your palette to simultaneously evoke your best for comparison, especially since we may have been in the same church – different pews, different times – but all on the same heady, wonderful journey of life in ‘O Beautiful Guyana’ of yesteryear.

The city of Georgetown began as a small town in the 18th century. Originally, the capital of theDemerara-Essequibo colony was located on Borselen Island in the Demerara River under the administration of the Dutch. However, when the colony was captured by the British in 1781, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Kingston chose the mouth of the Demerara River for the establishment of a town which was situated between Plns. Werk-en-rust and Vlissengen. Continue reading →

Mass shootings in the US continue to bring to the fore the issue of the relationship between mental illness and violence. For example, US President Donald Trump expressed the view that the February 2017 Florida shooter’s mental illness inevitably catalysed his mass killings. But what are the facts?

A 2000 article in Psychology Today entitled “Are the Mentally Ill Really Violent?’ by Edward P Mulvey and Jess Fardella, stated, “The overwhelming majority of people with diagnosed mental disorders do not engage in violence.” In fact the article pointed out, “Certain factors that appear to be associated with an increased likelihood of violence are in line with common sense’. In effect it’s the same for persons with and without mental illness. Continue reading →

The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption is a work of investigative journalism by Dahr Jamail, conducted during the period April 2016 to July 2017 on the front lines of human-caused climate disruption. Having lived in Alaska for ten years (1996-2006), Jamail had witnessed the dramatic impact of global warming on the glaciers there.

Jamail’s original aim was to alert readers about “the urgency of our planetary crisis through firsthand accounts of what is happening to the glaciers, forest, wildlife, coral reefs, and oceans, alongside data provided by leading scientists who study them.” His reporting took him to climate disruption hot spots in Alaska, California, Florida, and Montana in the United States; Palau in the Western Pacific Ocean; Great Barrier Reef, Australia; and the Amazon Forest in Manaus, Brazil. His grief at what was happening to nature made him realize that “only…

The Democratic presidential hopeful said: ‘Man, I’m just born to be in it.’

Lord give me the confidence of a mediocre white man! Specifically, I wouldn’t mind the confidence of Beto O’Rourke. A dude so assured of his inner greatness that, after losing a Senate bid, he decided the next logical step would be to run for president. Not only did he lose, by the way, he lost to Ted Cruz: A man so unlikable there’s even a conspiracy theory floating around that he is the Zodiac killer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think losing one election disqualifies someone from jumping into the presidential nominations. Stacey Abrams has said “2020 is definitely on the table”, and I’d be 100% behind her running. Then again, Abrams didn’t really lose the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial contest; she had the election stolen from her because of voter suppression tactics. Continue reading →